


The Evernight

by Fallingtowardsoblivion, scramjets



Category: Merlin (BBC), Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Space, Druids, Fanart, Fanfiction, Gen, Space Opera, military arthur
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-18
Updated: 2016-11-18
Packaged: 2018-08-31 16:24:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8585515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fallingtowardsoblivion/pseuds/Fallingtowardsoblivion, https://archiveofourown.org/users/scramjets/pseuds/scramjets
Summary: Pen's mission was to take back the light.   The snow is black underfoot, studded with chips of sparkling rock. It’s a reflection to the sky that hangs overhead, pin-pricked with stars and pastel-clouded with distant galaxies.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Fic by the lovely scramjets and Art by Fallingtowardsoblivion

 

 

[ ](http://s61.photobucket.com/user/saltyemrys/media/imdrunk_zpscv5lrzaw.png.html)

* * *

 

 

The snow is black underfoot, studded with chips of sparkling rock. It’s a reflection to the sky that hangs overhead, pin-pricked with stars and pastel-clouded with distant galaxies.

Pen staggers, catches himself. The tall figure that hangs toward the back of their troop stops and waits. Pen wrenches his feet from the thick black snow and catches up. His breath comes out in shadowy puffs, shades lighter than the dark that cocoons them. The figure turns forward and continues on, the heavy crunch of the snow under their boots and the sound of their breathing the only thing they offer.

Time passes as much as it doesn’t pass in the Evernight. The stars give no real answer, fixed in place as they trudge on underneath. Or perhaps it’s the stars that move while they remain still. Panic presses at the base of Pen’s throat at the thought, and his chest constricts the same way it had when his father had abandoned him in the sprawling forests of their lands. _Learn_ , the King had said. What he has is of little use here.

The line comes to a staggered stop. Pen squints up ahead to the broad-shouldered figure who leads them. His arm cuts through the air. They camp for the night.

The light of the fire doesn’t spill beyond the tight ring of people. Beyond that, the darkness rears up and smothers it; snuffs it out before it has the chance to take a breath the same way the wolves prey on newborn lambs still wet with fluid, eyes not yet open, blind to its own death.

Pen stares at the low leaps of the flickering flame, the thin yellow-orange licks that implore the sky, only… Pen wonders if they had it wrong -- if they walked across the sky and the ground hung overhead, and he crushes the snow in his gloved hands and concentrates on the in-and-out of his breath before he can’t breathe at all.

The clatter of tin-against-tin is muted over the weak crackle of flame. Weaker still is the murmur of conversation. He thinks he hears the muffled sobs of a child, the warble cry of _Mama_ , but he hasn’t seen a babe, neither walking or carried, and still he hears it like an underline to the long-lasting night.

Someone approaches, nudges one of the people aside to fold into their cleared space. Pen straightens, draws his hands to his lap to press against the hidden blade tucked against his body. Though sheathed, the line of it bites the skin of his torso.

“You’re new,” the person says, voice a rumble. “Where’re you headed?”

Pen glances at him and then stares when he realises that the man has forgone the hood of his cloak. His head and face is bare, left open to the rest of the troop. Pen flicks over his features: the high brow, the strong straight nose, the rough beard. His skin looks sun-warmed and his hair is long, strands curling against his stubbled cheeks. Pen licks his lips and turns back to the fire where it struggles, threatens dying.

“Just beyond the Night,” Pen tells him.

“There’s a beyond?” the man asks. There’s a note in his voice that suggests laughter.

-

Pen only ever catches glimpses of the rest of their party. The tips of fingers. The point of a nose. The curve of a mouth. The bearded man -- Gwaine -- is the only one brave enough to remove his hood, and the black snow catches on his face and on in his lashes, on his cheeks -- motes of ashen snow -- and it makes Pen think of the scroll his father gave to him and the slow bleed of ink through tea-coloured paper. His body fizzes with the urge to touch Gwaine’s skin, to retrieve his written orders from where they’re hidden and to touch there too so he can distinguish what is real. He’s dizzy with it.

-

Whenever Pen lags behind, the figure lags with him. Pen only knows him by silhouette: tall and willowy. He’s the one with the mouth. Pen’s seen the lush red of it, how the shadows turn the red to the same pastel purple of far-flung galaxies, like he’s smeared them across his lips and tasted them the same way Pen once tasted apricots, peaches, plums; sweet and sticky with juice.

“What are you looking for?” Gwaine asks when pitch camp.

The people curl up on the snow, neat circles of skin and bone, what little they own clutched close as they rest. A slight hand rests on bare snow, fingers loose and curled, and Pen thinks of the crumbling brick of the kingdom, the thick clouds that press against the high towers and that smear across the hard grey sky. The sheets of barren fields with its dry thicket forests and how they ensnare the wandering herd, panicked bleating across the void until it dies away. The village people cut off the spoils and eat the meat, accept whatever fate it brings them. There’s precious little clean water left. Pen had ridden out of the kingdom as they had erected sky-nets to wick water from the air.

“You cannot allow the people to suffer,” the King had said.

Gwaine sits silent as he waits.

“Forever,” Pen tells him.

The party moves on. People disappear, disperse, fold away into the creases of night. There are times where more join their party, present when Pen wakes and easy to distinguish by their lighter steps, backs unburdened by the journey. Pen aches to ask where they come from. The question presses against his teeth. He doesn’t ever find their footprints however far he looks back.

-

The figure waits for him when he falls behind, shrouded head turned to him, the mist of breath suspended in the still air.

“Who is he?” He wonders if he asks in the day or night.

“Who?”

Pen points and Gwaine looks. He turns back and scratches a finger against his chin. There’s an arc of black under the nail. Pen reads the shadows of his expression -- the deep cut of a frown, the crease of his brow. Panic rises slow and steady in his gut and it threatens to tip through his chest. _He doesn’t exist_ ; a figment chasing him across the black snow, but then Gwaine eases back and says, “A friend.” And then, “He takes care of us.”

“He waits,” Pen says.

“He does,” Gwaine agrees.

-

Their party has whittled down to four. The smallest lags behind, their cloak thick and heavy with clots of black snow. Their breath plumes in small panicked puffs. Pen looks behind and then ahead, unsure what to make of the growing distance. Gwaine and the shadowed-one stand as jagged columns on the horizon. The wind has already erased their trail.

“Here,” Pen says. Voice thin in the dark. Knees in the snow, head bowed towards the slight figure. He scoops him up and hurries, and the boy’s hood falls down, fabric bunching; round cheeks red and blistered from the cold, eyes shadowed, hidden by the roughly cut fringe. Pen grits his teeth, muscles sore as he slugs through the drift, forward-heavy with the boy’s unresponsive weight. Pain pings up his spine.

He catches up easily, spurred by the burn of anger through his gut, how it leaps through him, catching where the camp fire does not. But it cools when the scenery opens, when the snow gives way to a bare path and a thin thread of light. Pen’s boots skid on the loose rocks. He staggers, recovers, clutching the child close to him. The shallow heat of his breath skirts Pen’s face. 

The shadowed-one raises his arms to the opening sky and the air shifts, shimmering and molten, alive with the amber glow of dawn. Pen tastes it on his tongue.

“Gwaine,” he says, breathless. “Who--”

“Emrys,” Gwaine murmurs.

Pen’s heart thuds against his ribcage.

Find him. His father had said. He is ours. _Take him back_.


End file.
